BNN Chief says owner of nightclub where meth factory was found will be arrested dead or alive

Coconuts Jakarta Dec. 20, 2017

The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) made a shocking and unprecedented discovery this weekend when they did a joint raid of the MG International nightclub in West Jakarta and found a working methamphetamine lab on the building’s fourth floor.

The discovery has led to a flurry on hardline anti-drug rhetoric from government officials who have already pulled MG International’s license and have said they would conduct regular raids on many more Jakarta nightlife suspected of facilitating drug deals.

But the harshest rhetoric has come from BNN Chief Budi Waseso (perhaps best known for his much talked about plan to build an island prison for drug criminals guarded by crocodiles).

Budi has promised to capture the owner of MG International, Agung Ashari, who is currently on the run from pursuing police, and bring him in dead or alive.

“Yes, we are chasing him now and hopefully he can be captured alive. Because if he resists that’s his risk, we will ‘finish’ it in the field if that’s the case,” Buwas told Detik yesterday.

The BNN Chief said that Agung would definitely face the death penalty as the owner of a venue used as a drug factory, so he said it did not really matter what condition he was in when he was arrested.
“There is definitely (the risk) of the death penalty, so if he wants to die now or he dies later it’s the same, right?” he added.

Just to clarify, Budi Waseso is the head of Indonesia’s narcotics agency and not an old timey Wild West bounty hunter.

In fact his rhetoric is in line with his previous calls for drug criminals to be shot at the slightest provocation, rhetoric that has also been espoused by President Joko Widodo and which some say has directly contributed to changes in police procedure that has led to a large increase in the number of criminals shot for allegedly resisting during arrest this year.

In addition to his crocodile prison plans, some have questioned other statements by the BNN chief such as his suspicions that Amnesty International and other NGOs that are working to end the death penalty might work with narcotics syndicates and his repeated claims that drug dealers are targeting Indonesian children as young as kindergartners by slipping expensive narcotics into their candy in a massively long term and nonsensical investment scheme to eventually turn them into addicts by the time they have money to purchase drugs many years later.


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